12 Years ago I had a Sony Vaio. I quite liked it. Then in my next job, 2017 or so, I went for a Toshiba Portege, and absolutely loved it.
Guess what the above two have in common? Yup, they stopped making laptops for the professional market. So now I’m a bit at a loss. Any recommendations?
Requirements:
- Lightweight and easy to carry around.
- 13-15" display, preferably
- Decent battery life
- It absolutely must have an RJ45
- Works well with linux
- Good keyboard quality
- ISO keyboard availability
- Touchpad. Bonus points if it has the touchpad buttons ABOVE the pad itself.
Dell.
There’s a reason dells are everywhere
Actually, I thought dells were shit computers, then I started working at a place that only deals in Dell. I’m actually pretty impressed after having used a 5300. It’s been a pretty solid choice except for the battery.
I work help desk, and I’m actually surprised we don’t get more issue tickets considering it’s a global company.
Dells are great until they break. Ever seen an HDD taped the the top side of a motherboard? I hadn’t until I was working on a dell Inspiron. Also, their drivers are usually the biggest pain in the ass to load.
That being said, I had a D620 latitude in college with a 9 cell battery, and that thing would handle all my classes for the day on a single charge. It was also much sturdier than the Toshiba Satellite M505D I switched to.
I’ll piggyback on this one. I’m personally more partial to Lenovo if money and lead time isn’t an issue, but Dell Latitude is the budget business brand. On site repair support is roughly the same, they contract 3rd parties in whatever area you are in to do onsite repair.
I can reliably get Latitude 5500 series laptops with i5, 16gb, 256gb, and fingerprint reader for less than $1000 shipped, and that includes a 5 year on-site accidental included warranty with keep your drive. You drove over your laptop? Ok, here’s a loaner, let me try to pull the storage, and try not to do it again.
I can’t really fault that logic. I like the keyboard, the screen, any many other things with them. It’s just some minor annoyances with some of the Fn keycombos that I don’t like.
But one thing that I can say for sure: It will never be as durable as my Toshiba. It fell between two ships decks. It slid off the roof of a car and syraight into asphalt. It has pieces missing from it. The RJ45 port has been torn out of the mainboard. But it still works, and I bought it out for 50$ when I left my previous employer, and I still use it from time to time to this day.
I’ve used Macbooks in networking / programming and construction environments for over fifteen years. They’ve been incredibly solid in my experience. In fact, the first week I was given a Thinkpad, I broke it because it was so much more fragile than a Mac. I always used USB adapters for Ethernet and serial connections without issue. They also run Windows and Linux.
In fact, the first week I was given a Thinkpad, I broke it because it was so much more fragile than a Mac
Genuine question, but what the actual fuck are you doing with your laptops? I used a ThinkPad through high school and college, and school aged me certainly didn’t treat it very kindly.
I picked it up by the screen and the LCD cracked. I realize this is stupid but it’s something I’ve always done and continue to do with Macs.
Why? That’s not a good way to pick up laptop, the base is heavier than screen
I run Asahi on my 2023 m2pro mbp; performance-wise it’s closer to a contemporary i7 than the actual performance of the M chip on macos, but a lot of what I need is there, a surprising amount of stuff is compiled for Arm64 actually. Feels like normal Fedora in most every aspects. Coming from thinkpads / latitudes, keyboard is shit tho, really. Screen is great, sound is quite good, device feels sturdy but sleep eats 50% battery a day. Air vents are placed just right to gulp any spilled drink, like, vacuuming it off the table, a puzzling design choice. Prices took a dive with the advent of the m3 so I’m not really angry, a 2023 i7 thinkpad would have cost me the same.
Premium product experience at a premium price. Whether the cost premium is worth it is a judgment call for the user.
They also run Windows
They no longer do (since the switch to ARM) - unless you count running under a VM.
Windows supports ARM https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/overview
I know, but you can’t install it directly on a MacBook - you have to use a VM like Parallels or UTM.
The Lenovo E series ticks all those boxes. I use one for work and it’s good for an x64 laptop. Just hate how long it takes to come out of sleep. Nothing really beats a Mac there.
Vaio still exists
It’s just its own brand now
The HP elitebooks might be nice for you
